FIG. 2.

The autophagy pathway. As described in the text in further detail, autophagy induction occurs by inhibition of mTor, which results in reduced phosphorylation of the ULK1/2/Atg13/FIP200 complex in step one. In step two, vesicle nucleation occurs upon formation of the Beclin/Vps34/Vps15 complex, which phosphorylates PI to PI3P and labels the membrane as an autophagophore. The phagophore membrane is elongated during step three by conjugation of PE to LC3 by the Atg5/Atg12/Atg16L complex. The resulting autophagophore fuses with the lysosome in step 4 to digest the cargo in an autolysosome. Atg, autophagy protein; LC3, microtubule-associated protein 1A/1B, light chain 3; mTOR, molecular target of rapamycin; PE, phosphatidylethanolamine; PI3P, phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate. To see this illustration in color, the reader is referred to the web version of this article at www.liebertpub.com/ars